A Dog's Age: Four
by Sarga
Summary: Oneshot. Kagome is trapped on the wrong side of the well while Inuyasha goes to fight. Convinced that he is dead, after four years of mourning Kagome is shown just how wrong she was. Compliment to A Dog's Age: Eighteen.


**A Dog's Age: Four**

**Written by Sarga**

November/December 2006

_Author's Note: This story starts off the same as _A Dog's Age: Eighteen_, but it diverges at the second part. This is a compliment to _A Dog's Age: Eighteen_, and while this one was written first, either one can be read first._

_Some helpful terms:_

_bouzu – derogatory word for a Buddhist monk_

_hanyou – half-demon_

_haori – Inuyasha's overshirt_

_sutra – a piece of paper containing a spell_

_Enjoy!_

- - - - - - - - - -

**Four**

"_They say that a dog's age is proportional to a human's age by a ratio of 1 year to 7. For every 1 year in a human's life, the dog lives the equivalent of 7. Demons, at least those of the dog variety, tend to live a ratio of about 1 year to 60. Hanyou, they're a little less predictable. They can live anywhere from 20 to 40 times longer than a human, depending on the strength of the human and demon blood within them._

"_Inuyasha?_

"_I'd rate him at about 35 to 1. His mother was almost as stubborn as his father after all..."_

- - - - - - - - -

Kagome sings a tune from her time, one that hasn't really caught on, one that may never, but one that she likes, nonetheless. It speaks to her, like all of her favorites. A song of requited love, angst followed by eventual fulfillment. Her hopes, in other words, embodied in song.

The song at an end once more, Kagome puts away her MP3 player. Not wanting to wear out the batteries on her long journey, she allots herself a couple of minutes a day, for the times when she feels the most need for a pick-me-up.

"Are you done caterwauling yet, wench?" Inuyasha breaks through her moment of reverie.

Bristling at the insult, Kagome clamps her mouth shut and stomps past the impatient half-demon, schooling herself to not rise to the bait. As she continues onward in silence, the half-demon also grows edgy, loosing focus on the road ahead, and instead starts to glare solidly at the girl in front of him.

Deciding that the tension is not worth focusing on, Kagome reaches back into her bag to search out her MP3 player again, hoping to ignore the ever-more-frequent huffs from behind her. As quickly as she finds it, it disappears from her grasp.

"Hey!" Kagome intones as she sees the half-demon ahead of her scowling at the device. "I was planning on using that," she spits out in frustration.

"Too bad, wench," he growls back. "I'm sick of hearing it!" He slides the device into his haori, lost from her gaze.

With that, Kagome looses her thin control on her temper. "Son-of-a..." She reaches into her bag, hauling out the spare batteries. One at a time, she flings them at the stubborn half-demon. "Fine! Take it!" A battery hits his ear, causing him to flinch. "You'll need the extra batteries if you want it to play." Another battery hurtles towards him and he catches it mid-air, tucking it swiftly with the music player, further fueling Kagome's raging fury. In a final outburst, she flings the remainder of the batteries at the half-demon. "I'm going home where I can listen to what I damn well please. _SIT_!" Dropping her pack, she flees towards her refuge, the portal to her world. The half-demon lets out a string of explicatives as he attempts to extricate himself from the Inuyasha-shaped crater in the ground.

Kagome runs, fleeing from the controlling half-demon as if it were a matter of life or death. She breaks through the tree line just in time to see a demon incarnation of her enemy, Naraku. She becomes aware that she is no longer seeking respite from an angry friend, but rather refuge from an angry enemy.

Adrenaline pushes Kagome faster and she is rocketed forward even further as Inuyasha hurtles into her, toppling them both into the well. A blue aura engulfs the pair as they cross over into Kagome's time.

Panting, a bit shaken up, but none too worse for wear, Kagome lifts herself to her feet. Before she even looks to her companion, she is securely in his grasp, flying upwards to relative safety.

"Stay here, wench." Inuyasha's words, while harsh and commanding, come out softly. Too softly; She will not obey them.

Without waiting for a response, Inuyasha jumps back into the well towards the past. Their waiting foe undoubtedly ready to spring an attack.

Racing to her room, Kagome searches through her belongings for her archery equipment. Having left her pack in the middle of the road, she is without a bow. Finding a modern bow and quiver, Kagome quickly returns to the well's edge and leaps over the side.

She lands with a bone-jarring impact. On the wrong side.

Climbing up quickly, Kagome tries again, her eyes wide, desperation kicking in as she realizes with cool clarity that she will not be able to go through, not yet. She left her shards in her backpack.

That does not stop Kagome from trying.

On her seventh jump, Souta stops her. Worried, he sees the self-destructive determination in her eyes and he _knows_ that if he does not stop her now, she will not stop until she is injured.

Souta pulls Kagome away, her defeated posture alluding to the turmoil within.

- - - - - - - - - -

Three days, thirty-seven jumps, and a fractured leg later, Souta bars the well-house door. It is not strong enough to keep in a half-demon, of that he is sure, but it is enough to keep his sister from breaking the rest of her limbs.

Kagome keeps vigil outside the well-house for another week, her broken leg slowing her progress as she drags the lawn-chair and reading materials out with her. Two more weeks of denial, and she finally comes to a dreadful conclusion.

Inuyasha is dead.

She mourns. For a month she is barely consolable. It wasn't supposed to end like this. It wasn't supposed to _end_.

At the dawn of the day after the new moon, the second one since she has been stranded in her own time, Kagome awakens without new tears. Souta sees this as a good sign, and keeps her clear of the well-house.

Kagome is finally able to begin healing, the pain from the loss of her best friend and potential lover begins to fade into a dull ache.

Kagome moves on.

- - - - - - - - - -

--**Four years later**--

Kagome moves from her second year university history class. It is near the end of the semester and she has just aced a mid-term research essay about village habitation trends in the feudal era. How could she not when she had witnessed how people lived there first hand?

Kagome makes it to her on-campus dorm room without incident, deciding to study some of the later time periods, the ones she did not actually experience. Turning on the radio for background noise, Kagome's blood runs cold. She hears a song that she has not listened to in a long while, the one she was singing before her separation from Inuyasha. Waves of anguish overwhelm her and she breaks down in a fit of sobs. When her roommate arrives two hours later, she finds a desolate girl where her once-strong friend used to be.

- - - - - - - - - -

Kagome stumbles up the stairs to her family's shrine. It took her a four hour commute, but she has finally managed to arrive.

Home.

It hurts so much to remember him, that boy with amber eyes and silver hair. She's done everything in her power to forget him, to forget the loss, to forget the heartbreaking sorrow that she feels every time she passes the well house. She even moved out of the shrine and into a dorm just so that she could be away from the very thing that reminds her of him. Funny that it is the only thing that can ease the pain at times like these.

The god tree.

Collapsing into a heap of sobs on the ground before the mighty tree, Kagome almost misses the rustling behind her. Straightening up, so as not to bring embarrassment to her family, Kagome assumes a meditative position, allowing the visitor to go about his business. She stiffens slightly as she feels the man (for she feels that his aura is distinctly male) stops just behind her, too close for a stranger.

Then she hears it.

"Kagome."

The whisper, barely audible to Kagome's 'pathetic human hearing' makes her scramble to her feet. Whipping around to face him, she sees a startling sight.

Before her stands a human Inuyasha, but...he is _old_.

Well, not _that_ old, maybe in his mid-thirties. But still, he is no longer the boy she knew.

"Inu...yasha?" she questions, furrowing her brow in confusion. Even for a demon's strange aging, four years should not effect him this much. Unless it has been more than four years for him...

Kagome's eyes grow wide with the realization that he might have waited 500 years to see her.

"I came as soon as I could," Inuyasha's voice unknowingly confirms her realization.

Inuyasha stands there, not sure how to proceed, when the decision is made for him. Throwing herself into his arms, Kagome weeps tears of joy for finding him again, tears of sadness for having lost him in the first place, and tears of sorrow for the 500 years he has spent without her.

After a few moments of sobbing, Kagome finally reigns in her tears and pulls back. Taking a more critical look at her aged friend, she sees that he is in his human form and is dressed in slightly ruffled casual business attire, as if he ran here from another city.

"What happened?" Kagome asks, a hint of her anguish seeping through. "I thought you were dead," she whispers, scrunching her eyes closed in pain.

Inuyasha holds her then, knowing that he cannot make up for her lost years with a few mere words. Breathing in her calming scent, he guides her gently to his car.

"I'll tell you over dinner," Inuyasha offers as he opens the passenger door for Kagome.

- - - - - - - - - -

They sit in a quiet diner, not saying anything, the server not quite comfortable with their staring silence. Finally she interrupts.

"Can I get anything for you and your daughter, sir?" she asks nervously.

Inuyasha frowns before looking at the server, a hurt deep in his eyes that he hides from her but that Kagome can see plainly.

"Ramen for me," Inuyasha mumbles.

"I'll have the same," Kagome adds, her voice subdued, a mere shadow if its former exuberant self.

"He took them didn't he?" Kagome asks as the server leaves with their order. "Naraku. He took the jewel, right?"

Inuyasha nods. "He stole the ones we had, took the ones from Kouga and found the few remaining shards all within a span of a few days. The five of us had a hell of a time defeating him, but we did it."

"Five of you?"

"Me, the lecher, Sango, Shippo and Kaede." Inuyasha smiles fondly as he remembers friends from long ago.

"Kaede?" Kagome asks. 'Why not Kikyo?' remains unsaid.

"We knew we needed a priestess and even though she didn't have the same power, she did her part." he smiles sadly. "She died protecting us, but in the end we couldn't have done it without her.

"As for why I couldn't come back sooner, it turns out that the priestess Kaede left in charge was very, shall we say, _cautious_ around demons. When she found out from one of the villagers that we used the well, she put up several strong wards around it. Not even the lecher could break the wards. It took me eighteen years to break through..."

"Eighteen years! But...it's only been four, and you're so...well..." Kagome bites her lip and looks away from Inuyasha.

"Old?" he softly prods.

Kagome's shoulders slump slightly as she nods her head silently.

"I haven't come through yet," Inuyasha tells her, willing her to understand.

"Then how...?"

"I went through after eighteen years, gave you the jewel and came back. Then I waited for the five-hundred years, well more accurately, four-hundred ninety-three years, and then I came here. I knew you were finally alive when I heard a song on the radio, the one you sang with the device you left behind." Kagome nods in recognition. "I managed to keep it working for a few years, I even managed to change the batteries when they ran out.

"Did you know that your great-aunt Kagome looks nothing like you?"

Startled by the sudden change in topic, Kagome shakes her head.

"You mean my grandfather's sister?" she asks uncertainly.

"Yeah." Inuyasha grins in good humour. "Your grandfather was only a child when I burst into his room, your room now, looking for his sister Kagome. I think I permanently scarred the guy. After that he attempted to plaster every other visitor with sutras to ward off demons."

Kagome grins as she thinks of her grandfather's eccentric ways and realizes that such a childhood trauma could have been the cause of his quirky nature.

"His sister had brown eyes and really straight hair. Her aura was all wrong too, and I just knew that I was too soon. After that I had to stop checking at the shrine, otherwise I might have been tempted to contact you before it was time.

"Anyway, after I was sealed off from the well, we defeated Naraku and the lecher married Sango. They ended up having a few kids, I'll tell you about 'em some time." Kagome quieted the question she had on the tip of her tongue.

"Well, Miroku took a long time to find a spell that would allow me to pass through the barrier. I had to wait until I was human for it to work. It turns out it was the necklace that allowed me to go through the well after all." Inuyasha gives a wry smile. "When you took the beads off of my neck and I went home again, I couldn't get back to you."

Kagome's eyes cloud over in confusion.

"According to your time, I haven't come through yet. I won't come through until you're in your thirties. The person you see before you is five-hundred years older that when you left him. Kagome," Inuyasha's voice drips with raw emotion as he reaches across the table to hold Kagome's hands in his. "I've waited five-hundred years for you, and I need to let you know that I..."

Kagome's eyes go wide as he speaks, words she would have given anything to hear those few short years ago. But now? Now he is twenty years older while she is only four years older. She cannot deal with this new reality! He cannot change her world _again_, she cannot deal with...

"I love you."

Kagome pushes her chair back and stands abruptly, panic in her eyes, unshed tears welling up.

"I'm not ready."

Kagome retreats at a speed worthy of any full demon.

Running his hands nervously through his hair Inuyasha waits for the server. He knows Kagome will need her time, he remembers all of the times before when he chased her too soon. He will not make that mistake again.

The server returns with the two bowls and lays them down apologetically.

"Kids are so temperamental these days," she sighs. "She'll grow out of it."

Inuyasha shrugs noncommittally as he begins his meal, finishing off both bowls quickly. Paying the cheque without leaving a tip for the nosy server, he walks to his parked car.

As he flips out his car key, Inuyasha is met with the sight of Kagome leaning back against his car.

"I..." Kagome looks to Inuyasha's shoes. "I don't know how to get home from here. Could you...?" She raises her eyes to meet his.

Inuyasha nods and silently opens her door.

- - - - - - - - - -

They drive in silence until they reach the outskirts of Kagome's home district.

"The kids..." Kagome whispers.

"Excuse me?" Inuyasha asks, not sure what she is talking about.

"You said they had kids. Could you tell me about them?" Kagome lets her gaze drift to his and Inuyasha is grateful for his heightened senses; he would not be able to drive safely without his eyes otherwise.

Finally taring his gaze away, Inuyasha tells Kagome of the monk and demon slayer's life together, of their numerous children. She learns of their living descendants in the current era, the ones who only know him as 'Uncle Inu from the other side of the family'. Kagome smiles as he tells her of Sango's willful streak passed down, one that has been a source of samurai bravery. She laughs as he tells her of the slightly diluted version of Miroku's lecherous streak, still known as 'the family curse'.

As they approach the shrine, they once again fall into silence, this one the comfortable silence of good friends. Inuyasha pulls the car to a stop at the bottom of the shrine steps, pulling the parking break. He turns to Kagome and she once again stares uncomfortably towards her hands. He hands her a business card with his name and number.

"Matsumoto Inuyasha?" Kagome asks. "Is that your last name?"

Inuyasha gives her a small smile. "I have to change it every forty years or so, but it is for now." He gently lays a hand over hers. "I'll wait as long as you need, Kagome. I've loved you for 500 years, I can wait a few more."

Kagome gets out of the car swiftly, fleeing from the unfamiliar person who so closely resembles the person she knew. As he pulls away she finally has the courage to speak.

"I love you, too."

The car continues onwards and Kagome sighs. She begins the slow trek upwards towards her home.

Kagome reaches the well house and for the first time in four years she knows that she will not break down in tears tonight. She puts on a genuine smile before turning towards her home. Kagome enters her house, greeting her mother, brother and grandfather with a new exuberance she has not felt in years. She makes up an excuse of a break from classes before turning in for the night. Souta smiles, thinking that she has met a man, and his is not entirely incorrect.

Kagome settles into her old bed, sighing lightly as she lets the memories flood back, this time without the pain. After a few moments she hears the familiar sliding of her window opening and closing. She hears the soft padding of bare feet on carpet and her heart speeds up in anticipation.

"What took you so long?" Kagome asks timidly, sitting up in her bed.

Inuyasha grunts a laugh in reply. "I had to park the car."

Brushing Kagome's hair from her face, Inuyasha pulls her into a tight embrace.

"Kami, I missed you!" he breaths.

And so, in the darkness of the room, they forget while they remember.

He forgets the five-hundred years apart, forgets blood-soaked battle-field and fallen comrades, forgets the hurtful choices. He remembers Kagome, remembers love.

She forgets the love-oaths to another, forgets the stinging words once said, forgets the lost years. She remembers Inuyasha, remembers love.

Together they forget his five-hundred years to her four, and simply remember one plus one.

**END**

- - - - - - - - - -

_If you haven't already, I recommend that you read the complementary piece _A Dog's Age: Eighteen

_-Sarga-_


End file.
